It’s No Substitute for the Sun

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CreditNolan Pelletier

By Alissa Nutting

March 27, 2014

CLEVELAND — MY psychiatrist is a fan of “happy lamps,” lamps that use full-spectrum bulbs to treat wintertime seasonal depression. A really big fan. Opening his office door is like entering a scene in “Poltergeist”: I’m blinded by a powerful glow that emanates from every direction. I must rely on his voice in the distance calling out to me in order to orient myself. This is how our appointments begin: I go toward the light.

His phototherapy light is essentially the size of a big-screen TV. This gives our appointments a sci-fi type of atmosphere, as if we’re meeting on a holodeck in “Star Trek.” I stare at his theatrically warm smile and his very white, bright teeth, which themselves seem to be glowing. He appears to be an entirely different species than me — a much happier one. He’s a light eater. It seems to have made his skin glow, to have fortified his enamel.

Meanwhile, the only thing I’m radiating is desperation. It feels as if it’s been winter forever, and the forecast is for more of the same. Basically, I want some of whatever he’s on, pronto.

For most of my life, I lived in very sunny areas, and then work brought me to my current home in the Midwest. I was warned about the hard winters, but in my naïveté I shrugged this off. Six months of gray cold: How bad could it really be? Then the reality of going weeks without sunshine hit. During my childhood in Florida, I’d often see pale vacationing families running around in shorts in 60-degree weather. They were wide-eyed and inexplicably giggling, cracked out on daylight.

Now I understand completely. Winter gives me Old Testament vibes. Every morning over the past few months I would look out my window and think, “What else could this be but a punishment?” I saw the invigorating effect winter had on some members of my community — they were out sledding, throwing snowballs, using the cold to work up an endorphin rush. I watched the Winter Olympics. I observe it all and yet I fail to comprehend. Winter just makes me want to see how compact of a fetal position I can ball into beneath a down comforter after guzzling cough syrup. The only physical activities I can seem to manage are throwing the remote control at the wall after seeing the weather forecast and learning to program my space heater with my socked toes.

So, at my psychiatrist’s urging, I decided to try out a happy lamp for seasonal affective disorder this past January. I plugged it in at my office and sat in front of it as if I was a bed of hydroponic lettuce. My expectations were high. I wanted to get wasted on light. I wanted to get stupid. I wanted to get an unstoppable urge to go sing karaoke.

Instead, I felt a mild increase in alertness that was perhaps conducive to productivity. The effect was entirely reasonable and moderate, which was kind of a pity. I had wanted to be brainwashed into believing I was working on my laptop at the beach. Instead the glow had more of a cheery fluorescence to it, as if I was working in a cubicle, yes, but for a very affable employer: the new-tech money kind that provides health coverage for eight acupuncture sessions per calendar year and lets me bring my dog to work.

But I have kept using it, because I do feel that the light provides a stimulating effect. It seems to set off an alert in my brain that something important is about to happen, even though nothing ever does. “Be ready,” it tells me. “Things are about to begin.”

What saddens me is my awareness of its artificiality. The light has a low-calorie feel to it. It is the wavelength equivalent of margarine. I’m constantly comparing the light to the feel of buttery sunshine, and it’s constantly coming up short. In a way, substitution can increase longing even more than deprivation can. If before I felt that I was light-starved, now I feel as if I’m on a light diet. It’s an improvement, but an unsatisfying one: I’m still hungry.

Of course there’s no heat from the lamp, and my body senses this as being odd, too. Imagine eating a pizza that has the same caloric value as regular pizza but with no taste or smell: If you had a craving for pizza, it probably wouldn’t satisfy you. Maybe some of my physiological responses are the same, but there’s not a doubt in my mind that I’m not getting the real thing.

To make peace with the lamp, I have to look at it as a supplement rather than a replacement, something I do for my health, like brushing my teeth and exercising. I think of it as part of a regimen to keep me functional during the winter months. Like a human-size moth, I submit daily to its glowing gravity. People always ask me if it helps and I think it does; I’d probably feel worse if I stopped using it, and I certainly don’t want to feel worse.

And whenever I enter my office, the moment I turn on the lamp and light floods throughout the room, I can’t help thinking, Something is happening in here! I feel a positive sense of curiosity. The light allows for potential. It allows for hope. That may have been enough to get me through the winter, but I couldn’t be happier to cram it back in its box for the spring.

Alissa Nutting is the author, most recently, of the novel “Tampa” and an assistant professor of creative writing at John Carroll University.